A big thank you goes out to all of you who played a part in shaping the web site through feedback, user conferences and direct user testing. We will continue to strive to provide you with high quality technical support information and enhanced features in the future.

A
“Tips” link is now available in the search box to provide users
with tips on creating meaningful search terms. Items such as
“Creating effective search terms, “ and “Refining the results
using filters” are included.

Non-English
users can choose to search English documents after
selecting the “View All" or "More" results links
within modules.

Product
search enhancements

Improvements have been made to provide the most relevant results when searching for
a product with the 'Quick find' or ''Find a product' functions.

R8.0:R8.1:

The
Support Portal recognizes searches for products that have been
recently sold or acquired and provide links to the proper support
site for the product.

Mobile
site updates

A
link to fixes (downloads) is now available on the mobile site.

This
link takes users to the Fix Central site where fixes are
available.

Direct
access from ibm.com/support for additional locales

Previously,
users in the following locales were directed to country specific
support pages when accessing ibm.com/support:

Greece
- Greek

Jordan - English

Kuwait - English

Lebanon - English

Bahrain
– English

Qatar - English

Oman - English

United Arab Emirates -
English

Saudi Arabia - English

South
Africa - English

Hungary
– Hungarian

Romania
– Romanian

Switzerland
– French

Switzerland
– German

Latvia
– Latvian

Lithuania
– Lithuanian

Portugal
– Portuguese

Poland
– Polish

Serbia
– Serbian

Slovakia
– Slovak

Slovenia
– Slovenian

Ukraine
– Ukrainian

Bulgaria
– Bulgarian

Morocco
– French

Tunisia
– French

Algeria
– French

Cyprus
- English

These
users will now be taken directly to the Support Portal when accessing the
technical support site from ibm.com.

General comments: Defects resolved in this release include

418650 - Services Admin module displaying incorrect systems

Known issues:

Document links may be unavailable in modules and in search results for products for which a version has been selected. To obtain additional links and results, please remove any version settings from the products in your product list.

A new “Support
shortcuts” module is available on the “Support home” page
that provides users with quick access to fixes, service requests,
product documentation, problem resolution, and installation and
upgrade information.

Communities
enhancements

A
new “Recent community activity” module replaces the former modules on the “Communities” tab.This
new module presents social media information, including recent
activity from Twitter, blogs and wikis and forums/user groups for the
user's active products.

Product
selection enhancements

Product search automatically
displays matching results after 2 characters are typed into the search
box. Search results are updated as more characters are entered.

Document
tags and ratings

In
previous releases, authenticated users were able to utilize the
social tag feature on a subset of documents. With this release,
authenticated users are able to use social tags on all technical
support documents.

Once signed in, users are able to add a tag to a page. They can also view
the tags that they have created for that page using “My tags” or
to view all the active tags for that page using the “All tags”
link.

Users can
click a tag in the tag cloud or tag list to see a list of pages
tagged with that tag. Users are also able to select “Search
all tags” and enter a tag in the search box to find pages with
that tag. (A semicolon should be used as the delimiter when
searching multiple tags.)

Note: Tags meeting the following criteria will be ignored
a) There is any occurrence of semi-colons, commas, greater-than, less-than, double-quotes, tilde, left and right square brackets or Japanese half-space characters
or
b) The tag starts with a period, colon or back-slash

Similarly, users are nowable to rate all technical support documents.

The average rating is calculated and displayed for each page.

Search
enhancements

Users are able to
filter search results by social tags.

Additional helpful
search tips are provided for searches that return no results.

Note: The search terms
entered in the search box are used to search against the title, URL, keywords and content of all support pages. The search engine does not search other data associated with those pages, like user-supplied tags or document type, that are displayed in the left column filters on the search results page.

Mobile
enhancements

The “My service
requests” feature has been optimized for mobile devices.

New “Notifications”
subscriptions are supported for a subset of products.

For those products not
yet supported for subscription in the mobile interface, users can use for the full site to subscribe.

Direct
access from ibm.com/support for additional locales

Previously, users in the
following locales were directed to country specific support pages
when accessing ibm.com/support:

India - English

Taiwan - Chinese
(Traditional)

Belgium/Luxembourg -
English

Belgium/Luxembourg -
French

Belgium/Luxembourg -
Dutch

Netherlands - Dutch

Singapore - English

Thailand - English

Vietnam - English

Vietnam - Vietnamese

Malaysia - English

Philippines - English

Indonesia - English

Hong Kong - English

Egypt - English

Austria - German

Sweden - Swedish

Finland - Finnish

Norway - Norwegian

Denmark - Danish

Anguilla - English

Antigua and Barbuda -
English

Aruba - English

Bahamas - English

Bangladesh - English

Barbados - English

Grenada - English

Guyana - English

Pakistan - English

Dominica - English

Montserrat - English

Jamaica - English

Trinidad and Tobago -
English

Saint Vincent and the
Grenadines - English

Turks and Caicos Islands
- English

Costa Rica - Spanish

Croatia - Croatian

Czech Republic - Czech

Greece - Greek

Saint Kitts and Nevis -
English

Saint Lucia - English

Netherlands Antilles -
English

Bermuda - English

British Virgin Islands -
English

Cayman Islands - English

Sri Lanka - English

Suriname - English

Chile - Spanish

Colombia - Spanish

Paraguay - Spanish

Peru - Spanish

Mexico - Spanish

Uruguay - Spanish

Venezuela - Spanish

Ecuador - Spanish

Argentina - Spanish

Bolivia - Spanish

These users are now
taken directly to the Support Portal when accessing the technical
support site from ibm.com.

General
Comments:

Enhancement requests
implemented in this release include:

8916/333672 – Make
downloads easier to find

8746/8747/333512 -“Search All Support and Downloads" is the default search choice. If browser cookies are enabled, the value selected will be saved for the next visit to the Support Portal.

Known issues:

Search does not function for any
query strings containing double byte characters.

Authenticated users who keep their
search results page open for more than 10 hours will be signed out
and prompted to sign in again.

Filtering search results by tag is unavailable in the Internet Explorer V8 browser.

Search does not respond for anonymous users using Internet Explorer who
have previously visited the "Service requests & PMRs" page during
their session.

IBM Support Portal R7.1 has been deployed.
Please visit the site at www.ibm.com/support.

Key updates include:

Inventory upload

User
interface enhancements

Support for additional English locales

Direct access from ibm.com/support for additional locales

Details:

Inventory upload

Authenticated users can upload inventories via the Support Portal.

In the “Find a product”
module, if an authenticated user selects the “Products for <user
name>” radio button and the “My inventories” selection in
the drop down, the user can select the “Upload new
inventory” link to upload an inventory file.

The ability to search by
machine type and model number is currently available. In R7.1, this
functionality is made more evident to users in instructional
text in the “Choose a product”, “Quick start” and “Find a
product” modules.

Link titles are
improved and based on the line length of the user's browser.

Link types are
clarified using the following updated and new icons.

Support
for additional English locales
Support has been added for
the English locales of Curacao, Kenya and Nigeria.

Direct
access from ibm.com/support for additional locales

Previously, users in the
following locales were directed to country specific support pages
when accessing ibm.com/support:

Australia
(English)

Brazil (English)

France (French)

Germany (German)

Ireland (English)

Italy (Italian)

Korea (Korean)

New Zealand (English)

Spain (Spanish)

United Kingdom (English)

These users are now taken directly to the Support Portal when accessing the technical
support site from ibm.com.

General
Comments:
Enhancement requests
implemented in this release include:

4175: Support should be
easily available by Machine type and model number.

Known issues:

Search results are limited to content in the language of the selected locale.

Search, including any links in the portal that involve searching, does not function for users who have a product containing an apostrophe in their product list.

Based on feedback from our users, we have implemented several enhancements to make it easier to find support information on
our site.Key updates include:

Product selection enhancements

Page simplification

Improved the visibility of the “Sign in” link

Updated layout of the “More results” pages

Simplified problem reporting

Fix Finder link

Improved site assistance

Mobile notifications support

Mobile Service request support

Details:

Product selection enhancements

For users who prefer to view only one product at a time in the Support Portal, an “Allow multiple selections” check-box has been added to the “Choose a product” module. De-selecting this check-box allows only one product to be active in the Support Portal at a time. Users can choose to make a different product active by using the radio buttons.
R5.2.1:
R6:

Using “Browse for a product,” users are able to select products based on inventories that have been previously uploaded to IBM.
Inventories can be uploaded either automatically via the Electronic Service Agent (ESA) that is available for numerous IBM hardware platforms, or manually via Fix Central or the IBM Support Assistant (ISA) tool. Additional details on uploading inventories to IBM can be found at http://www.ibm.com/software/support/portal/about-inventory.html.

Page navigation has been moved from a module in the left column of the portal to a tabbed interface at the top of the portal.
R5.2:
R6:

The “Planning” and “Installation” pages have been merged into one “Plan & install” page.

The “Usage” page has been eliminated. The content that once appeared on the "Usage" page now appears throughout other pages in the portal as well as in the “Product usage” module on the “Documentation” page.

Improved visibility of the “Sign in” link
The “Sign in” link now appears on a black background, making it more apparent.
R5.2:
R6:

Updated layout of the “More results” pages
The “More results” pages have been redesigned. The layout has been updated to make content easier to navigate and find.
R5.2:
R6:

Simplified problem reporting
Problem reporting has been simplified on the “Service requests & PMRs” page. The “IBM Service Request for software” module is now always available on this page for software support. And a new module, “Service Requests for hardware, PC support, countries and recent acquisitions,” is now available to direct users to the appropriate links for hardware, Lenovo and recent IBM acquisitions support.
R5.2:
R6:

Find fixes by inventory
Finding fixes and downloads has been simplified by a link in the portal to a Fix Central application that allows users to search for fixes and downloads based on inventory. Signed in users can find a link to this application for each active product that is supported by Fix
Central in the “Downloads and fixes” module.

Improved site assistance
IBM Support Portal Site assistance page now appears in a separate browser window enabling users to reference the site assistance while continuing to utilize the portal. In addition, the site assistance information has been revised and reorganized to better assist users in understanding how to use the site, and “Translate this page” can be used to view the content in any of the 10 languages supported by the dynamic translation function.
R5.2:
R6:

Russian language support
The Russian language is now supported in the dynamic translation function in right column area 'Translate this page.'

Mobile notifications support
Mobile users who are signed in and already subscribed to product notifications are now able to access product notifications in the mobile site.

Mobile Service request support
Mobile users who are signed in and already registered as an IBM Service Request for software user can now access their service requests via the mobile site.

General comments:

Enhancement requests implemented in this release include:

* 11567 - Make the sign-in link more obvious* 3410 - Enhance the usability of the "Service requests and PMRs" page

Known issues:

* The WebSphere Application Server product appears in two places in the product tree. It appears under the Tivoli brand as well as under the WebSphere brand. When the product appears in the URL of the portal, it will appear under the Tivoli brand.
* When you sign in, you may see some product names that are blanks or duplicates in your product list. Until a fix is available, delete the blank and duplicate product names.
* Information for PowerHA is currently unavailable. Work is underway to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.

The IBM Support Portal Release 5.2.1 has
been deployed.Please visit the site at
www.ibm.com/supportportal.

Key updates:

“Support home” portal page

Enhanced download experience

Details:"Support home” portal page
Users will notice
that the main Support Portal page has a new name. The name has been
changed from “Support Overview” to “Support home” to more
accurately reflect the content on the page.

Enhanced download experience

The downloads process for products with multiple components has been simplified.
For these types of products, users will now be presented with a
single link to view fixes for the product in the “Downloads and
Fixes” module on the “Downloads” page. After selecting this
link, users will be able to select a specific product component as
well as the needed version fix level and operating system.

The IBM Support Portal Release 5.2 has
been deployed.Please visit the site at
www.ibm.com/supportportal.

Key updates:

New look to the Support Portal
pages

Support for mobile users

Enhanced Technical Support client
offering updates

Details:

New look to the Support Portal pages

The look of the
IBM Support Portal has been updated to be consistent with the new
look of the ibm.com site.

Users will notice:

New headers and footers

A new black
and grey color scheme

Changes in
module design in the center content area

Previous look:New look:

All locales currently have access
to the category links of “Solutions,” “Services,”
“Products,” “Support & downloads,” and “My IBM” in
the new masthead. Masthead expanded sub menus are also available
for a subset of locales, including Australia, Brazil, Canada
English, Canada French, China, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan,
Korea, Russian Federation, Spain, United Kingdom and United States.

We welcome your feedback regarding the
available expanded sub menu options as we work to make masthead
expanded sub menus available for additional locales in the future.

Support for mobile users

An IBM Support
Portal mobile BETA site is now available.

Smart
phone users will see the mobile site by default. The choice to go to
the full site is available. Tablet users will be taken to the full
site by default.

Android,
Blackberry V6 or later, and iOS devices are currently supported.

Features
of the mobile site include:

Product
selection

Search
and document display

Flashes
& alerts

Warranty
lookup

We will
continue to provide additional features for our mobile users in the
future. We welcome your feedback on the current function and what
additional functions you would like to see.

Enhanced Technical Support (ETS)
client offering updates

Additional
offerings have been added for ETS clients.

In the “My
support programs” module, the “Maintenance and technical
support” tab has replaced the “ETS and CTS” tab for ETS
clients.

ETS clients
can find ETS links as well as any ETS for AIX or Custom Technical
Support (CTS) links to which they are entitled to on this tab. A
drop down is available to clients who are entitled to more than one
ETS program to allow selection between the set of links that are
shown.

Known issues:

The following accessibility issues will
be fixed in a future release.

The “Active” and “Product
name” column headers in the "Manage
my product list" table are not announced by screen readers.

When using the Tab key to identify the 'Go' button, the focus does not change on the following pages: "All download links,” “All
troubleshooting links,” “All documentation links,” “All
planning links,” “All installation links,” and “All usage
links.”

When screen reader mode is active, the "My IBM contacts" header announces "Blank" 5
times before continuing to page contents.

While navigating through modules running the JAWS screen reader, the
module headers are not read by JAWS. The module header can be read by
the JAWS screen reader using the Virtual cursor. One way to read the
module header is by tabbing to the skip link in the module header and
then using the JAWS key + left arrow to read the module header text.
Additionally, the module headers are available in the JAWS Headings List
dialog accessed by JAWS key + 6.

While navigating the complimentary side bar modules in the right hand
column of Support Portal while using the JAWS screen reader, the
expandable section headers for “Site availability,” “Site news,” and
“Support feedback” do not expand/collapse when pressing the Enter key.
The key stroke is processed by JAWS. A work around for this issue is to
type JAWS key + 3 to pass the key stroke through to the application
before pressing the Enter key.

Pressing
the Spacebar on the "Browse for a product" check box
causes a delay as the screen reloads and is reread top to bottom.

Avoid using the space bar on the Login screen. Using the Spacebar will cause the Overview page to be displayed with the focus positioned at the bottom of the page.

The IBM Support Portal Release 5.1.1
has been deployed.Please visit the site at
www.ibm.com/supportportal.

Key updates:

Product selection enhancements

Service request technical support
chat

Details:

Product selection enhancements

Several
enhancements have been made to product selection.

In the
“Choose your products” module, users can now toggle between
their full product list and their active product list:

Users can
also edit and delete products in the “Choose your products”
module using the edit and delete icons:

Clicking the Edit
icon allows users to add or modify operating system and/or version
information for that product:

In the
“Manage my product list” overlay, users can now easily delete
all of their inactive products or their complete product list:

Anonymous users who subsequently
authenticate to the portal will be given the option to add products
in their current product list to their saved product list:

When a user adds more than 10
products to their active product list, the user will be notified
and the least recently modified product in the active product list
will be deactivated.

When a user adds more than 100
products to their product list, the user will be notified and the
least recently modified product in the list will be deleted from the
list.

Service request technical support
chat

Technical support chat is now available
on service requests (PMRs) that are enabled for chat. Chat enabled
service requests are indicated with a chat icon in the “IBM Service
Request for software” module on the “Service requests and PMRs”
page. Users can initiate a chat with an IBM technical support
representative about a service request by clicking on the chat icon.

General Comments:

Additional performance improvements for greater reliability
and resiliency have been made to this latest version of the IBM Support Portal.

Defects resolved in this release include:

9676: My support programs module is not
visible when signing in

Known issues:

Browser language settings will
not be utilized in the IBM Support Portal when directly accessing
authenticated pages. We are working to fix this problem. To
avoid this issue, first access the portal anonymously and then
sign in. Your language browser settings will be carried through
after authenticating.

The left
navigation column in the portal may disappear after very long
periods of inactivity. If this occurs, please clear the browser's
cache and cookies, and then access the portal again. We are
investigating this issue and will post a fix as soon as possible.

The IBM Support Portal Release 5.0 has been deployed.
Please visit the site at www.ibm.com/supportportal.

Some key features include:

Enhanced Technical Support and My Inventory programs available in My Support Programs module for authorized users

Ability to view current orders and invoices from the Support Portal - Customer Support OnLine link

Ability to view technical support information for Power systems at the machine type and model level

Ability to view fixes for specific operating systems, versions and releases directly from the Support Portal

Search module moved to a common location similar to other industry websites

Defects resolved in this release include:

5439: Downloads and Fixes portlet unavailable

809: Back button from search result takes you to beginning of result set, rather than where you left off

Enhancement requests implemented in this release include:

1752: Clarify different search options

3592: Eliminate redundant hover text

1097, PLEE-7X2VXX: allow feedback form to accept different character format from other languages

Key feature details:

Enhanced Technical Support and My Inventory programs available in My Support Programs modulefor authorized users
Authorized customers will now have access to the ETS and My Inventory programs in the My Support Programs module
These programs provide links to Enhanced Technical Support features to which the user is entitled to access, including the following new Support Portal modules:

My service profile: systems
My service profile: systems provides a view of users' systems associated with their IBM ID. Users can name a group of systems, add a contact to systems, or disassociate a system with their IBM ID.

My service profile: customer numbers
My service profile: customer numbers allows users to add and remove customer numbers that are associated to their IBM ID.

Administrator: systems
Administrator: systems enables primary contacts to manage the relationship of IBM IDs to their systems, including adding and removing contacts for a system and modifying primary contact settings.

Ability to view current orders and invoices from the Support Portal - Customer Support OnLine link
Users can now access Customer Support OnLine via the portal using the “Access your order and invoices” link in Support Resources in the right hand column of the portal.

Ability to view technical support information for Power systems at the machine type and model level
Machine type models have been added for power systems.

Ability to view fixes for specific operating systems, versions and releases directly from the Support Portal

Users can get directly to a list of fixes in Fix Central and will not be prompted to re-select their product/VRM/OS in Fix Central.

Link to recommended fixes in Fix Central for those products that support recommended fixes.

Search module moved to a common location similar to other industry websites
To align with best practices on other web sites, the Search module has been repositioned to the upper right.R4.0.1:R5:

Other notes:
1. Notifications using inventory (for clients with premium contracts) are not available in the Notifications module at this time. Those notices are available on the Electronic Services site at www.ibm.com/support/electronic.

Welcome Software AVP, IntelliStation, BladeCenter, System x,
Power, System i, System p, System z, and Storage customers to the IBM Support Portal! You can now access all of your technical support information and tools from this unified, customizable view. For information on how to use the new site, go to the IBM Electronic Support YouTube channel or to the Support Portal News & Alerts blog post to view educational videos.We are excited to have you on board and welcome your feedback!

Users can now choose to edit the version/OS of their selected products from the “Choose your products” module.

Users can now more easily add multiple instances of a product with different versions or operating systems to their product list.

“Search for a product” is now the default tab in the product selector. However, if a user chooses to use the “Browse for a product” tab rather than the “Search for a product” tab, that preference will be retained for the next use of the product selector.

Users can now search for products in the product selector using common product name synonyms.

Filtering by version and OS

Filtering content by version and operating system is now available in most modules.

Enhanced Warranty module

The warranty module now offers a parts lookup feature. The portlet will appear when any System x product is chosen.

Enhanced download experience

The “Recommended fixes,” “Download tools,” and “More download links” modules have been removed, and these links have been moved to the “Downloads and fixes” module.

R3.2:R4:

Enhanced IBM Service Request for software module

The IBM Service Request for software module has been enhanced to allow additional filtering.

Bookmarks

Signed in users can now access their IBM site community bookmarks in the IBM Support Portal. Bookmarks can be found on the left column of the portal.

Top ten modules

“Top ten” modules appear on the Overview, Troubleshooting, Planning, Installation, and Usage pages and provide links to the top ranked technotes for the user's active selected products.

My support contracts module

A new "My support contracts" module is available to all signed in users on the Overview and Troubleshooting pages. “My support contracts” allow users to access information about their support agreements.

IBMLink access

Users can now find a link to ServiceLink in the “Support services” module on the Overview page.

Other notes:

The new Warranty module features are currently available in English only.

Please avoid using Internet Explorer v8 with the IBM Support Portal. It is currently not a supported browser, and there are known issues, including: content will not appear for anonymous users in the IBM Support Portal when using IE v8.

When AVP customers sign into the IBM Support Portal, the associated company name is being recorded for metrics purposes. User details are not recorded.

The "System x Integrated Solutions" brand has been added to the product list.

Notes:.1. Notifications are not yet available for the products under the new brand in the "Notifications" module.2. Downloads and fixes are not yet available for some of the products under the new brand in the "Downloads and fixes" module.3. When using search, the "Cloudburst" product under the "System x Integrated Solutions" brand may be listed twice.

The IBM Support Portal is a unified, centralized view of all technical
support tools and information for all IBM systems, software, and
services. Customized based on your product inventory, entitlement, and
geography, the portal will let you personalize the pages to focus on
exactly the information and resources you need for problem prevention
and faster problem resolution.

The following videos introduce the IBM Support Portal's capabilities and explain how to use key features.

Using the IBM Support PortalThis
video demonstrates how to get started using the IBM Support Portal and
explores some of the resources you might use when troubleshooting a
problem. View video

More Troubleshooting ResourcesIn
this video, you learn about additional troubleshooting resources
available in the portal such as forums and recommended fixes. View video

Additional ResourcesThis
video describes additional features of the IBM Support portal including
News and Alerts, Notifications, and opening a Service Request with IBM
Support. It also shows you how to manage your product list to focus the
portal and make the information you need easier to find. View video

Personalizing your IBM Support PortalLearn how easy and simple it is to personalize your portal page to reflect the way you work. View video

With each release, the IBM Support Portal is improved and enhanced based on your feedback and that of your peers. We hope your finding the portal useful and helpful, and that you've been pleased with its evolution since it was first deployed.

As we gear up for the next release and prepare for the eventual sunset of the existing IBM support website pages in 2010, we'd like to get your feedback on how the new portal experience compares to the existing support sites. We hope you can take a few minutes to fill out a short questionnaire that evaluates the IBM Support Portal in comparison to the existing IBM support website pages.